existence as a people, the Carthaginians had a regular government-note circulation of little real value, as far as the metal enclosed, and the leathern envelope were concerned; but of considerable value as paper money. Poor nineteenth century! One by one it loses its borrowed plumes. The Egyptians claim its wigs, and the Jews seize upon its banks; the Carthaginians appropriate its paper money; its overland mail belongs to the Ptolemies; and as to its Photogenic drawings and Daguerrotypes, "ad huc sub judice lis est;" whilst the last new discovery of its wise men of the north, that steam will extinguish fire, might be justly claimed by every little boy who has put out a match with the steam of the kettle, since the very invention of those useful utensils. Stripped by such ruthless hands, it will soon have nothing left but its vanity.

One novelty, alas! may be claimed by the Scotch, those strict observers of all religious matters; viz., that philosophical desecration of the house of God, which was reserved for the members of the British Association at Glasgow-the conversion of the Presbyterian Church into a lecture-room. We quote from the Athenæum of Sept. 26—

6

"Friday-It having been announced that Dr. Chalmers would on this day read a paper on The Application of Statistics to Moral and Economic Science,' the lecture-room was filled long before the time appointed for the assembling of the members, and such a crowd collected before the door that it was impossible for the chairman and committee to obtain an entrance. Under these circumstances the meeting was adjourned to the church adjoining the college, which in a few minutes was nearly filled. LORD SANDON took the chair in what is usually called the precentor's desk, and Dr. Chalmers then partly read and partly delivered an address, which lasted for two hours, replete with eloquence and ability."

Can the rev. doctor, after such an exhibition, venture to claim for the Church any more sacred name than that of conventicle?

It was not the increasing preponderance of the Roman power, the confining of authority in the state to none but the rich through heavy entrance fees and expences during service, or the accumulation of many offices in one person, that contributed to the fall of Carthage, so much as the fallacious principles on which her extended commerce was conducted-principles that forced her to depend on gold and mercenaries rather than on her own hand and arm.

The principle of their commerce was the accumulation of the precious metals-the ruin of Venice and of Spain. When Carthage was a young state, the agricultural produce of her own territory was sufficient for the support of her inhabitants, and

therefore they took little from the native African but his golddust in exchange for the most paltry manufactures. As her population increased beyond the possibility of subsisting on their own corn, they seized upon Sardinia and Sicily as their cornfields, bartering such of their manufactures as were suited to the people, and completing their purchases with African gold. The supply of corn and the demand for manufactures increased in very unequal proportions, as in those days luxuries were not so much in demand as necessaries; and consequently every year's commerce required a greater supply of the precious metals. The profits increased greatly, and naturally drew every one into trade. Then was the defence of Carthage left to mercenaries. Previous to the conquest of Spain, the supply of the precious metals, great as it was, was not sufficient to admit of great accumulation, or to check industry; its only effect had been to make Carthage one large manufactory. But when, by the conquest of that country, she became the mistress of its mines, and obtained untold gold in exchange for the most trifling articles of barter, and latterly by force, the influx of an immense supply of that metal worked steadily to her ruin; as the mines of Peru did to that of Spain; and the gold-accumulating trade between the East and the West did to that of Venice. With the increase of gold came that of mercenaries, and the decrease of all industry, particularly agricultural. Half Africa and Europe were in their pay, until their mines failed them, or were transferred to another power. The people had no excellence in arms or tactics; in all their numerous host, the native Carthaginians never appear but as generals or officers. Depending entirely on their navy for the defence of their country's shores, they were as deficient in fortresses as in native soldiers, and consequently, when their continental conquests in Spain rendered armies more necessary than fleets, and the people, from the superabundance of money, were more willing to subsidize Africans, Numidians, Gauls, and Spaniards, than to serve in their own persons, their navy declined, their country became defenceless, and in a few years every thing beyond the walls of the city fell before an invader. "Thus (says Dr. Arnold), with abler leaders and a richer treasury, but with a weaker people, an unguarded country, with subjects far less united and attached to her government, Carthage was really unequal to the contest with Rome;" for Rome, indeed, depended on itself and its sword-Carthage on its gold

and its mercenaries.

90

ART. V.-Life and Times of the Countess of Huntingdon. By a Member of the Families of Shirley and Hastings. Two volumes. Fifth Thousand. London: Painter. 1841.

FRUITFUL as these volumes have been to our own minds in subjects of gladdening or melancholy meditation, and various as were the feelings of sympathy, of admiration, and of disapproval, with which we turned over their ample pages, we had not intended to offer any public expression of opinion respecting their merits or their defects. Recent circumstances have altered our determination; and we open these records of religious exertion once more, with a view of presenting a few reflections upon their temper and objects to our readers. And, indeed, the book itself carries a powerful appeal to the diligent and considerate examination of all who peruse it. Its composition has evidently been a labour of love, as well as of years. Perfectly unacquainted with the writer, and ignorant alike of his character and situation, save that he declares himself "a member of the families of Shirley and Hastings," we have been struck by the earnestness of his zeal, the apparent sincerity of his religious impressions, and the hearty confidence with which he throws himself into the stream of his narrative. He believes what he says, and is in earnest about it. This is a great thing; it gives a principle of life to his volumes, and animates the reader, even when fatigued and disappointed.

Nor should we pass over unnoticed the glimpses of eminent men in the world of literature and politics that frequently at once attract our attention and reward it. These portraits, or rather outlines, are often sketched with the vivacity and truthfulness of a religious Boswell: but the value of the work is to be sought for in the religious information it unfolds to us.

The Life of Lady Huntingdon forms an episode in the history of Christianity; but it is a chapter neither to be written nor annotated upon within the limits of a review. The torch of the Reformation had long been burning with a faint and dying flame: even the foot-prints of the giants who lived under the first James and his son had been washed away by the flood that came in from France with the return of the second Charles. In succeeding reigns the corruption deepened, and "casuistry (in the words of Pope) began to walk in lawn." The literary temper that distinguished England in the time of Anne was scarcely less fatal to the advancement or awaking of true religion than the open license of Charles; it begat a polished indifference-it transferred religion among the arts and sciences, and made the teaching of the Word of God an element of the belles lettres.

If Hall, or Taylor, or Hammond, could have revisited the world which they had blessed with their presence, they would scarcely have recognized the Church they had left behind them. We read in the fictions of the East of palaces, the work of enchantment, being removed by a sudden and supernatural impulse into a distant region of the world; where, instead of fragrant gardens and silver fountains, are beheld only the solitary waste and the withered herbage of the desert; the beauty of the structure departs-its domes of pearl are changed into stone, and the architecture erected by the hand of genii crumbles into ruin. The alteration in the temple of Christian truth in England was still more wonderful; her resplendent shrines, so rich in the jewels of Scripture promise, had grown dim through neglect; her gates, so long called "Beautiful," had lost their lustre; her battlements were trodden by drowsy watchmen. The very climate in which she stood seemed to have undergone a change, and was now cold, dreary, and disconsolate.

And the night was long, though joy came to her in the morning. Descending to a later period, the same symptoms of national irreligion force themselves on the eye. Among the lower orders, a vulgar ignorance--among the higher, a graceful negligence, were the prevailing characters; Scepticism wore a calm and hateful smile; Socinianism, hideous and malign in aspect, defiled the very altars of God; and Heresy, under all the insidious forms of serpent cunning, reared her crest into the air, and threatened to "poison the morality of the land." Folly and Impudence stifled the voice of Wisdom where it might still have been heard, and

Henley broke the benches with his strain,

While Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson preach'd in vain."

The atmosphere of religious feeling was loaded with vapour, and only a few sickly rays of light struggled through the darkness. The clergy, viewed as a body, continued to be deficient in energy, and in the adaptation of their doctrine and lessons to the necessities of their hearers. Cowper, with much bitterness, but much truth, alludes to the degraded temper of his own age in a well-known passage in "The Task "

"Profusion is the sire

Profusion unrestrained, with all that's base
In character, has littered all the land,
And bred, within the memory of no few,
A priesthood such as Baal's was of old,
A people such as never was till now."

The exertions of a few learned and devoted men could not arrest the tide of irreligion and unbelief, or carry the ark through the dry formalism that not only impeded its motion, but threatened to annihilate it altogether. Education, in its universal application to the scattered families of the land, was not only unknown, but despised; children grew up at the knees of Ignorance, and the apostrophe to the—

"Dauntless infant! never scared with God!"

need not have been confined to "The Dunciad."

At this crisis rose Methodism. Strictly speaking, the first impulse to that sect was not given by Wesley, but by a young fellow-student at Oxford (Mr. Morgan, of Christ Church), who died before the energy and enthusiasm of his friend had given. his name to a society. Wesley's account of the circumstance is sufficiently clear and interesting—

"In November, 1729 (he wrote to Mr. Morgan's father), at which time I came to reside at Oxford, your son, my brother and myself, and one more, agreed to spend three or four evenings in the week together. Our design was to read over the classics, which we had before read in private, on common nights, and on Sunday some book in divinity. In the summer following Mr. M. told me he had called at the gaol to see a man who was condemned for killing his wife, and that from the talk he had with one of the debtors, he verily believed it would do much good if any one would be at the pains of now and then speaking with them. This he so frequently repeated, that on the 24th of August, 1730, my brother and I walked with him to the castle. We were so well satisfied with our conversation there, that we agreed to go thither once or twice a-week, which we had not done long before he desired me to go with him to see a poor woman in the town who was sick. In this employment, too, when we came to reflect upon it, we believed it would be worth while to spend an hour or two in a week, provided the minister of the parish in which any such person was were not wholly against it."

Such was the beginning of Methodism. Originating, as the learned Bishop Coplestone remarks in one of his discourses, in a gentle stream of benevolence and good-will towards men, it gradually deepened in volume and widened in surface, as other springs of Christian exertion communicated with it, until at last it swept into sight a rapid and mighty river. Under these circumstances, it should have been met "with a definite theology, with an analysis of its errors-(we use the words of a contemporary) and a discrimination between what it contained of truth and what of falsehood." No exertion of this kind was made; its adversaries did nothing but abuse it. The great body